Utopiayile Rajavu Movie Review

On paper, the combination of veteran director Kamal joining with a successful writer like P S Rafeeque who had earlier scripted movies like Amen and Nayakan holds lot of promise. Add to that there is an actor like Mammootty also becoming part of that project is an added bonus. But the reality is that the combination doesn’t work any wonders and end up on a sore note.

An attempt to present a satire through fun in the first half that later address some social causes gets a bad treatment and ultimately other than occasional fun element and some light hearted humor, Utopiayile Rajaavu is a film that tries something but could not present it convincingly.

P S Rafeeque create an imaginary village called Koprankara and narrates some incidents in the life of CP Swatantran who is the son of a freedom fighter Parameswaran Pillai. Since the story is set in a remote village, naturally a bunch of characters that we see normally in such categories of movies do find a place in Utopia also.

Kamal and his writer gives a Pranchiyettan style of feel to the movie but here other than the fantasy feel there is nothing much to write about Utopia unlike the Renjith movie that was highly successful due to the support of a wonderful script written by Renjith himself.

In Utopia, there are situations that have been written and filmed well but those are very few in numbers and doesn’t help much to make the proceedings free of dullness and boredom. In the end, this two and a half hour movie at times test your patience also.

The good things shown in the second half was appreciated by the audience especially when the male protagonist takes law into his own hands and take it to the ministers and politicians. Though it was repetitive it is a fact that nothing has changed with the mindset of politicians towards the common man.

Though whatever was given to Mammooty was rendered well by the actor, there is nothing much to perform for him as CP. At times he just becomes one among many where the focus is is more on other characters. Jewel Mary made a reasonably good debut and was quite convincing as Umadevi.

Joy Mathew and Tini Tom appearing as fantasy characters were notable. Sunil Sugadha and SP Sreekumar did their humorous characters better while the other supporting actors were equally good. It was a rare instance of Sudheer Karamana not getting his timing right as the police inspector as the actor put up a bad show here.

The song sung by Vaikom Vijayalakshmi and Jassie Gift was a different one and appear thrice in the movie. The punch it had along with the lyrics and way of rendition deserves a special mention here. All credits to the singers plus music director Ouseppachan and lyricist P S Rafeeque.

So overall, Utopiayile Rajavu from Kamal is a disappointing attempt where nothing happen for a major portion of the running time as the script wander about without any direction until it finds something to show. But by that time, it was too late. I am going with two out of five for Utopia.